"Undernutrition of my child disappeared after few months", Ethiopian praises PIN support

Just a few streets further along and the busy city centre is forgotten. Small roads disappear into nature outside the city. One of them leads to 25-year-old Lominesh Teshome’s country house. People are coming curious what visit came to their neighbourhood.

Lominesh, a mother of two, smiles balancing her toddler in her arms. Just a few months ago, a smile was hard to muster. "My child had health problems very often; the most serious was pneumonia. Health extension workers invited me to visit the medical post. They measured my child and identified undernutrition," Lominesh explains.

At the same time, People in Need (PIN) with the support of Czech private donors started systematic work to reduce undernutrition in the area. Lominesh participated in the programme. "The first information I heard about such an opportunity was from People in Need colleagues working in the area. Now I know that without this intervention my child wouldn’t have progressed," she says.

Lettuce, carrot, chilly… I like kitchen gardening

But back to the beginning of Lominesh’s story. PIN is well aware that undernutrition can best be addressed by focusing on its core, multi-sectoral causes. This is why the team in Ethiopia integrates effective Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), food security, and health interventions. Across all sectors we address the most critical period of children’s lives - the first 1,000 days.

During the trainings Lominesh learned how to improve sanitation at home, how to grow new crops and to prepare nutritious food from them. "I learned how to keep my children clean. But my favourite activity is definitely kitchen gardening," she says.

With the support of the PIN team she prepared six seed beds next to her house and started to plant recommended plants. "Now I planted cabbage, chilly, beet root, lettuce, and carrot," Lominesh says pointing out the already visible shoots in her prepared beds. "I already had two harvests, this will be the third one. Previously I had also tomato and paprika," she adds.

I helped my neighbours to prepare the garden

During the harvest season, Lomishe’s small garden produces enough food for her family, but for two or three months she needs to buy vegetables from the market. Her favourite recipe? "If you mix lettuce, cabbage and carrot, add vegetable oil and other ingredients you can prepare a very good soup. My daughters like it very much," she says breaking into another smile.

Improvements in sanitation, along with new plants, recipes and nutrition practices, brought results in just a few months. "A lot of things changed and improved. Pneumonia of my youngest child went away, and so did the nutrition problems," Lominesh says.

When the neighbours saw how much these easy and low-cost changes improved the family’s health, they were interested too. "I helped my neighbours prepare the beds to plant seeds for their own gardens. We are helping each other," Lominesh says. She’s confident about the future too, even after PIN’s help ends.

"I received practical knowledge so even after the support stops I can buy seeds in the market and I know how to use the benefits of kitchen gardening," she explains. Leaving Lomishe’s house, we pass by a few other houses with their own kitchen gardens sprouting.

Altogether, the PIN team already supported over 600 households. A total of 800 households were supported in Sidama zones in several villages across southern Ethiopia since November 2014. The support was extended to provide vegetable seeds, chemical fertilizers and farm tools for 364 households. Additionally, 51 handwashing facilities serving to 1000 people were installed.

Half of Ethiopian children suffer from malnutrition

Official statistics show that nearly half of Ethiopian children are affected by malnutrition. The impacts are dramatic, harming cognitive function, causing physical stunting, and preventing children from reaching their full potential. PIN’s Integrated Programming for Improved Nutrition (IPIN) addresses four priorities for reducing malnutrition.

We strengthen the official agricultural extension system to increase and diversify families’ access to food throughout the year. We also support improved hygiene practices and access to water and sanitation, which reduces the risk of diarrhoeal disease preventing absorption of nutrients.

At the same time we support improvements to the official health extension system and its linkages with agricultural extension services to ensure sustained behavioural change for improved infant and young child feeding and care practices. Equally importantly, we take full advantage of our expertise in gender inclusion to ensure men are also engaged in addressing maternal and child nutrition issues at home.

None of this would be possible without the support of PIN’s Club of Friends, the humanitarian e-shop Real Gift, and Real Aid public collection.